Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.When Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith wrapped up their brilliant BBC TV show Inside No 9 last year there was great lamenting from everyone who had loved this endlessly inventive, funny-peculiar series. Across a decade, the self-contained episodes dropped little beads of gothic horror and deep poignancy into often mundane settings. But endings are never quite what they seem where Pemberton and Shearsmith are concerned, and now up they pop, bringing their blend of macabre comedy to London’s West End. It’s a move that builds on our enthusiasm for stage frights — in recent years 2:22 A Ghost Story and Ghost Stories have relished spooking live audiences, while the terrifying The Woman in Black thrilled theatregoers for years. And theatre loves a ghost story: there are so many rumoured spirits stalking the old West End playhouses that it’s a wonder any living souls can find a space in the bar. Pemberton and Shearsmith seize on this — there is, of course, a ghost at Wyndham’s Theatre who needs to make an entrance. But Stage/Fright is a multi-layered piece on the whole business of haunting: who haunts whom, where and why? And while fans will delight in spotting Easter eggs in the plot, the pair mix it up with a meta-theatrical story specific to their new location. They draw on beloved performances past and revel in deliberate misdirection, sudden shifts of perspective and the glories of live theatre.The opening prologue sets the scene, with a blood-drenched warning about theatre etiquette that hints at the disorientation to follow. Thereafter we’re picking up on an episode from series four that tips us down a rabbit hole into another sketch. Soon we have lost our footing as to what layer of artifice we’ve arrived at — a state that continues as new scenarios unfold like origami, sprinkled with moments, characters and gags from the show.It stands on its own, however. Simon Evans’ staging see-saws from extravagant grand guignol to modern terror techniques to vaudeville, all pitched on the borders between the scary, the sad and the silly. Popular theatre styles past and present collide; Grace Smart’s shape-shifting set, Yves Barre’s deliberately ridiculous costumes and Neil Austin’s wildly dramatic lighting get in on the act. There’s a lot that’s absurdly funny, as well as one sequence that is genuinely hair-raising. Meanwhile a deeper, more moving thread works through the piece about the interplay between acting, memory and haunting. For all the knockabout stuff, this is a show that reflects on the transience of life and theatre, the role of performance in both, and the way the past lingers in the present. Pemberton and Shearsmith are onstage throughout, inhabiting various oddballs and drawing on their own rich performance history together. They’re joined by a mischievous, versatile cast — Anna Francolini, Miranda Hennessy, Rebecca Bainbridge, Toby Manley, Gaby French, Bhav Joshi, Mark Extance and Christina Tedders — who keep us guessing as to exactly where the truth lies. Occasionally the production teeters on the high wire that the writers have slung up. But, as with their best TV shows, it’s capped with an unsettling twist that makes you doubt your eyes and drills to the emotional heart of the piece. Another wildly clever, madly innovative and suddenly moving show from this inspired duo. Will it be their last gasp? Who knows.★★★★☆To April 5, insideno9onstage.com
